A record of my lifelong learning experiences and personal reflexions. .
I sew ideas for my teaching and learning projects.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

What's the role of the teacher?

The term I used to name de new role of the teacher, lurer, has a negative connotation in English; maybe in another languages too. To let me know about it Ariel, very gently, sent me the following twitts.

Kristina Hoeppner went farther, looked up the term and shared in the comment area: "A lot of times, at least in my understanding of the term, luring is used to make people do something they would never do on their own. I don't have a great idea for a possibly better word to use. All seem to have a somewhat negative implication attached to them."

About the teacher's role she says: "I think we do not only have one role but many, maybe sometimes packaged all together, sometimes only one or a dominant one."

Nancy White, with her bright mind and warm spirit came by to share that "In the facilitation world, an alternative term is "invitation." It has been long recognized in that domain that it is often more successful to invite people in rather than to require them. And that the quality of the invitation matters -- how do we make it irresistible?"

As I mentioned in my previous post, the name given to the teacher is the less important part. What matters is what you do and how you do it, if you engage with learning honestly you'll set an example for your learners. Your words may be taken away by the wind but your actions remain to drag others along the wonderful learning path.

Jenny explains the above much better in her post called "A Good Teacher". I totally agree with her: "She (Nancy) is recognised world-wide, but her humility and obvious desire to be one of the learning group and not apart from it, is the mark of a good teacher." Nancy made a deep impression in my soul, she's always present

In another venue, Allison Miller states that "Teachers already have e-moderating skills. They just need to analyse what you currently do face to face–and then convert it to online".

What do you think?. According to your views, what's the role of the teacher?. If you are a good f2f teacher, does that qualify you be be a good online teacher too?. If not, what else do you need to develop to become one?

1 comment:

What a question, Maru!"If you're a good f2f teacher, does that mean that you can be a good online teacher?"First of all, you need to move in a different media, one that lacks the immediacy of the "real world". In that sense, words can become more important because in many cases it's the only means you have to convey meaning (no body language to help you here although you have emoticons)However, I think that one of the most important qualities of good teachers is knowing how to reach their students, how to "invite" them, if you prefer. And that is something that, as a teacher, you always need to do, no matter the media.So I guess my answer to your question is "yes".